//------------------------------// // The Final Tally // Story: Titanic // by Imperator Chiashi Zane //------------------------------// “Jack?” He didn’t move. Not a flinch. She raised her hoof, ignoring the crackling as her fetlock tore where it had frozen to the bodies. Her hoof hit Jack, square in the middle of the forehead. He slipped back, still unmoving, and sank into the water. She screamed, “JACK! NO!” He was gone. She looked around now. Jack was gone. But what was it he had said, Luna would make sure she kept her promise…But Luna was in the moon. How? She dropped her head to the freezing pile with a fleshy thump, and started wriggling into it, the sharp edges of the ice cutting at her skin. She stared at the ice for a minute or three before she saw something coming up. Jack’s face emerged from the water, his hoof took hers, “Come on Rose. You promised. The boat’s right there. You can make it. Follow me.” He pulled her into the water, though she wasn’t sure how much of the work he was doing, and how much she was. She swam up to a floating Officer corpse and grabbed the Griffon’s whistle. It shrieked in the cold air, and she cheered to herself, looking around for Jack, but he was gone. No matter. He was nearby. He would be rescued too. She blew on the whistle again. __ Officer Lowe turned the boat at the shrieking whistle, “Row that way! Pull!” The boat arrived to a chilled, pale Unicorn mare blowing on the whistle still around his superior officer’s frozen neck. He reached down with his talon and dragged her up into the boat, away from the whistle. “Find…Jack…” she mumbled as she passed into unconsciousness beneath Lowe’s coat and several blankets. __ __ ”Fifteen hundred ponies went into the sea when Titanic sank from under us. There were twenty boats floating nearby. Only one came back. One. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six out fifteen hundred.” Rose sounded like she was regretting being saved. The salvage crew stared at her in awe. The reality of what happened hit them for the first time since they had heard the story. Now, they felt like grave robbers. Steep Dive was the first to speak, “Did they save Jack?” Nothing about the diamond. Even Rock Heart didn’t care. “Seven hundred of us waited there, sitting in the boats, expecting to die. We hoped to live, certainly. But we were uncertain, except for a few Pegasi who had no doubts in their minds that they wouldn’t. We waited for hours for any sort of answer. Good or bad. __ __ Island stared at where the ship had gone down, the waves still trembling in that peculiar round way a pond did when a stone fell in it. __ Kale sipped nervously from a hip flask offered to him by a black-faced stoker. The giant of an Earth Pony smiled. __ Truth huddled into her coat, beneath Mossy Brown’s firm arm. __ Rose slept, and dreamed. Dreamed of Jack, of Luna, of Thestrals and Unicorns. __ A Pegasus sitting on one of the ‘life-clouds’ they had pulled down noticed the rescue ship first, and leapt up, shouting. __ Officer Lowe lit a green flare and tossed it up to the leaping Pegasus, staining the cloud a smoggy green. __ The Carpathian floated calmly between the icebergs, Pegasi and Thestrals from the crew and passengers that had offered to help flapped around, scooping up one or two survivors at a time from the less seaworthy boats as others were drawn up to the gang-way doors. Survivors found each-other, wept in each-other’s arms, survived. Rose found herself slipping onto the deck wrapped in warm blankets. Bright Island was no longer fitting of his namesake. His eyes were dark, both with exhaustion and sorrow. He passed a row of survivors, trying to avoid their harsh gazes. It wasn’t right, they were saying with their eyes, that he survived when so many of them didn’t. More than once the officers escorting him had to catch him, to stop him from hurling himself off the side. __ Kale searched around the deck where the survivors had been situated for the time being. One of them had to be Rose. He knew it, deep in his heart. He had to apologize. He approached where the Steerage passengers had been settled in, and was stopped by a steward from the Carpathian, “Sir, you won’t find any of your people there,” the steward tapped Kale’s tuxedo, “That’s all Steerage.” The glare Kale gave the stallion made him lurch back and flee. It wasn’t that it had any particular power behind it. Kale was too tired for that. It was more that his eyes were ringed in black, exhaustion and fear wearing on his face as harshly as the weather, so deep that he could be mistaken for a corpse. He continued to look through the Steerage passengers, maybe he could find her. Beneath one of those blankets, hiding behind a shawl… He finally found the pale golden Unicorn, sipping tea. He sat on his haunches before her, eyes still dark, but with some glimmer of life left. She looked like a refugee. He looked like a corpse. Fitting for how he felt. His hoof brushed her splintered mane away from her muzzle, “Rose.” “Yes, I lived. How awkward for you,” there was no malice in her voice, though rightly, there should have been nothing but. “Rose, your mother…” He was cut off by her hoof reaching up and touching his muzzle so gently he would have sworn it hadn’t touched at all. He still recoiled like he had been slapped. “Please, Kale. Don’t talk. Just listen. We will make a deal, here, signed in the blood of the dead. From the moment you stand up, I don’t exist for you, and you don’t exist to me. You will never see me again, nor will you attempt to find me. In return, I will say nothing. What happened last night will never be revealed. In turn, you get to keep your carefully crafted honor,” her last words were just as soft as the first, but it felt like she had spat in his face again. His Honor, not like it had any meaning to him now. “Is this in any way unclear?” Kale paused, thought it over, reasoned that a real lawyer would have been able to find some loophole, then stopped. It wasn’t worth it. “Your mother will weep at your grave. I will not.” “I didn’t expect you to,” her hoof met his for a moment, then he pulled away and stood, walking to the railing. “Rose, before I walk away for good, know this. You are more precious to me than any jewel. I cannot promise to treat you as though you no longer exist,” he coughed, and pulled his tuxedo vest off, laying it carefully on the deck, folded like he intended to pack it in a suitcase. His shirt followed, revealing his frost-faded fur. “I cannot go back to them, to the honor I no longer have. It is time to say goodbye to Kale Hockley. Goodbye Rose, and may we meet again under different stars.” His hooves clomped against the deck as he trotted away. That was the last time I ever saw him. As Kale anyways. He changed his name, took up one from another Third Class family that didn’t make it. I never knew he was such a magnificent actor. He married some mare, got his millions. The Crash of 28 killed him though. I heard he put a pistol in his mouth. His foals fought over what was left like hyenas or so I read. A steward trotted up to Rose and asked her for her name, she responded, clearly and without thinking, “Brilliant Rose Darkson.” After a moment, the steward looked at the paperwork in his magic, “Did you lose somepony?” Rose quivered, and softly her voice crept out, “I lost everypony.” No tears. Now was not the time. Jack’s soft hoof on her back kept her from breaking. __ The Carpathian eased into New Yoke Harbor, slipping past the Statue of Liberty. It was beautiful. A media circus greeted the ship at the dock. Immigration officers checked each as they left the ship. Rose gave her new name, stronger this time. She saw Kale nearby, giving his own false name. She pushed into the crowd and vanished. __ __ “Can you exchange one life for another? A Caterpillar turns into a Butterfly. If a mindless insect can do it, why couldn’t I? Was it any more unimaginable than the sinking of the Titanic.” “We never found anything on Jack. There’s no record of him at all,” Steep Dive muttered to himself, half directing it at Rose. She smiled, “Of course not. There wouldn’t be, would there? I’ve never spoken of him to anypony else, up until now. Not even Fuzzy. Not even her grandfather,” she turned to Rock Heart, “But now you know there was a stallion named Jack Darkson, and that he saved me. In every way that a pony can be saved.” Her eyes closed softly, “I don’t even have a picture of him. He exists now, only in my memory. Mostly.” A feather-light touch on her shoulder, where none of the other occupants of the room could reach, brought her tears out, “There you are, colts. The whole story.” __ The wrap-up party filled the ship with cheery music, despite the lack of success. Enough had been found that the diamond was no longer the important part. Rock Heart didn’t join in though, standing with his forehooves over the railing, staring at the obsidian surface. Fuzzy trotted up to him, carrying a pair of beers in her magic, “I’m sorry.” Rock looked at her, a pause in his monotonous staring, “We were pissin’ in the wind the whole time. I doubt there even was a diamond,” his eyes suddenly focused past Fuzzy’s head, “Oh Shit!” __ Rose stopped her nightly walk at the back of the ship, standing at the same part of the railing where she had met Jack on the Titanic so many years before. Jack stood at her side, as he always had. Her nightgown fluttered in the breeze, a resounding contrast to Jack’s dirty tunic, still stuck to his fur in that tailored way that had made her heart flutter. He helped her stretch up over the rail, holding his hooves to her sides for balance as she leaned out. “I kept my promise, Jack.” __ Steep Dive was the first to arrive, hearing the shout and snapping to attention in the way that only a High-cloud Pegasus could. It had taken him just under half a second to go from swinging the young orange Pegasus filly around to hooves touching down on the railing, wings stretched out. Then his brain caught up. Rose lurched back from the railing, and something fell to the deck, attached to her hoof by a thin chain. The Heart of the Ocean. “You had it the entire time?” Rock Heart stared at the gleaming stone. Rose smiled back. “You know, the hardest part about starting out so poor, was being so incredibly rich. But every time I thought of selling it, it reminded me of Kale. It reminded me how he had given up his riches, how he intended to earn his honor back without his family money. I got by without his help.” The stone floated into the air, and out over the water. Dive tensed, his rescue instinct ready to dive after the falling stone. He had time to pull up. “Don’t drop it, Rose!” Dive flicked his wings, telling the others he could catch it. Distract her.” Heart shook his head at his partner, “Look, Rose, I…I don’t really know what to say to a mare who tried to jump off the Titanic when it wasn’t sinking, and back onto it when it was…We’re not dealing with logic here, I know that…but please…Think about this a second.” “I have. I came all this way so that this Thing could go back where it belongs.” The stone glittered in the light. Rock Heart crept closer, hooves barely moving. His horn glowed softly as he prepared to grab the stone the instant it left her grasp. “Let me just hold it in my hoof, Rose. Please. Just once.” He moved closer, almost touching her. To everypony’s surprise, she actually brought the stone forward and set it in his upraised hoof. It fit perfectly there. It was exactly how he imagined it. It was perfect. “Goddess…” His eyes climbed, meeting Rose’s own. Her eyes seemed so much deeper, more wise now than ever before. “You’ve been looking for treasure in the wrong place. Only life is priceless, and making each day count.” His hoof relaxed, falling away from the levitating stone. His eyes never left Rose’s, even as she gave an impish little grin, the same one he had seen in the portrait. The diamond shot away, skipping across the dark surface twice before sinking into the ocean and disappearing forever. Steep Dive hadn’t even had the chance to stop himself from leaping after it. He had pulled up just in time to hit the water with his outstretched hoof moments too late. “Lady, that sucked.” Rock Heart stared, his face trying to decide what reaction was appropriate. He settled on laughter, rolling over on his back, legs kicking in the air. All of that, just to watch it drop. He would never see that stone again, even if he spent months scouring the sea floor for the blue glint.